Heads or Tails

Fifteen-year old Christopher sincerely wishes to start anew. In a new class. He wants to change, become better, smarter, stronger, more successful. A somebody. The idol of a generation. But he started his new life with lies and concealment. Christopher was in a correctional institution for several weeks, because he beat up a peer brutally. This is now past. Now, everything is different. He's doing well at school, he no longer has contact with his old friends. But his new life will not go into the right direction. His parents are never at home. His old friends make sure he doesn't forget them. His new school-friends sabotage him. Then there's the Other who constantly makes his life miserable, constantly comments on his acts, statements, and even bets Christopher will be back in the pen in no time. A vicious fight erupts between them. Sometimes the Tails wins, and sometimes Heads.
Katja Hensel, an actor, director and playwright born in 1967 in Hamburg, researched in Berlin and Nicosia in Cyprus how teenagers think about violence: how a disparaging remark triggers a punch in the face and how does this punch turn into a massive fight? What is violence like when it escalates? How are we raised with it, how do we get used to it, how do we execute it, how do we pass it on, and how do teenagers live with violence? Which cultural and social patterns contain violence? Their answers were the basis for texts and improvisations, and the materials collected were the basis for Heads or Tails, which was commissioned by the Theater an der Parkaue Berlin and theatre THOC in Cyprus as a part of a larger project “Young Europe – Young Creation and Education in Theatre”, organised by the European Theatre Convention. The creators of our performance also took the text as a material to be developed and adapted for the Slovenian space, where fights in schoolyards are fast becoming breaking news and where it seems we no longer have mechanisms to confront violence in schools, society, and everyday life.